White House just escalated feud with top Republican Senator after critical Trump comment

Senator Lindsey Graham came for Trump this morning and the White House wasted no time firing back.

Graham implicated Stephen Miller as the “outlier” causing government shutdown negotiations to stall.

The White House employed the old “I know you are but what am I approach,” calling Graham the outlier in a response.

“As long as Sen. Graham chooses to support legislation that sides with people in this country illegally and unlawfully instead of our own American citizens, we’re going nowhere. He’s been an outlier for years,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said.

Graham revealed what’s really going on with the stalled negotiations: White House staffers are undermining anything approaching a compromise. Specifically, it’s immigration hardliner and noted right wing extremist Stephen Miller who is making a compromise seem impossible.

The former staffer for Attorney General Jeff Sessions is famous for his opposition to anything resembling a bipartisan approach to immigration.

And given the fact that Trump’s whims change with the winds, he’s just as likely to contradict himself at any given moment as anyone else. So having oppositional White House staffers in the mix only serves to undermine the negotiation process.

The government remains in shutdown mode since midnight on Friday. Republicans and Democrats failed to come together to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded and open for business.

Democrats are sticking to their guns and rejecting all deals that don’t include provisions protecting the Dreamers. Republicans are using children in a nasty move that pits recipients of healthcare under CHIP against 800,000 young people living and working in this country with undocumented status after being brought across the border by their parents as children.

Stephen Miller’s outlier status, according to Graham, virtually ensures that there’s no end in sight. His extreme views don’t belong anywhere near the negotiating table, where it’s crucial to make concessions and hear the other side’s point of view in order to come to an agreement.